Olivia M. O'DwyerConservationUniversity of Athens
Olivia is an archaeological conservator with a particular interest in wall paintings. She has worked with a number of international excavations, including the Marzuolo Archaeological Project in Tuscany, Italy, and the Palace of Nestor Excavations in Pylos, Greece, where she managed the conservation laboratory. In addition to joining the Middle Kingdom Theban Project in 2023 she is participating in the excavations of the Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology in Kaman, Turkey. Olivia has lifted, examined, documented and treated a range of archaeological material, from ivory and cartonnage to copper alloy and painted plaster. Olivia is currently a PhD candidate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she is researching Bronze Age wall paintings from the Greek mainland with a particular focus on workshop practice, regional variation, and the production of the synthetic pigment Egyptian blue.
From September 2023, she will be a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens Malcom H. Wiener Laboratory for Archaeological Science. Olivia holds a BA in Classics from the University of Cambridge, and an MA and MSc in Conservation from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL). She has undertaken collections care projects at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford. While working on the refurbishment of the new Ancient Middle East Gallery at the Ashmolean Museum, Olivia developed an enduring interest in the history and sociology of archaeological conservation.
